Hacker News Reader

Comment by jklinger410 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not vegan but I think about it all the time.

Same boat.

I'm not a vegan, and I try my absolute best to avoid thinking about what we put animals through. It certainly sits in a specific category of intrusive thoughts. The only real analog to this in my mind is being aware of my own mortality; I just avoid that thought and shove it out of my mind. Occasionally my comparatively relaxed life is harshly interrupted by an awareness of these facts and I'm ripped back to these realities for just a short, terrifying moment. Graciously, a distraction is always readily available.

Disclaimer: I’m “vegan”, for some definition of the word.

Candidly, I think that reduction in animal suffering is worthwhile, but you get diminishing returns quite quickly. I’d suggest only doing things that are easy.

For example:

- While grocery shopping you’re choosing between two types of burgers with similar cost and enjoyment: pick the one that causes less suffering.

- Your tires need to be replaced for a camping trip this weekend: don’t stress about trying to find vegan tires.

- You like cow milk and non-dairy milk the same amount: snag the one that you feel better about.

- Your favorite crackers have some trace amount of milk powder in them and all of the alternatives suck. Buy them.

Over time, the number of things that are “easy” will increase, and in my experience it’s way more practical than trying to engage in vegan perfectionism and googling things like “which cars are vegan” every time you need to buy something.

I'm strictly vegetarian, I will not ever eat meat, but as for vegan parts this is my strategy and it works really well!

it's pretty easy these days, too. veg foods are prolifically available, and oat milk is damn good, even in my morning cappuccino.

it becomes something that is positive when it's always a minimization and hueristic rather than a ruleset and guilt-ridden.

essentially, "I'm vegan but i don't stress it"

I am not a vegan but I think it would be useful for every meat eater to humanely kill and prepare an animal to eat at least once in their life. Having done so, I think I learned a lot about death and whether or not I was willing to eat an animal after preparing a few myself. I also think it is important to be aware of our own mortality and to think about it a healthy amount. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori

I've thought about the mortality angle quite a bit, for the reasons you say, and can see how that would be useful -- even something as simple as fishing can force you to confront some realities about life and death and how we relate to the world. Did your behavior change after your experience?

I would say I do eat less meat but that is more for health reasons. Also, I am more grateful to eat meat when I am more aware of the sacrifice that it takes. As far as the realities of life and death, I would say that I am pretty comfortable with them. I can't generalize that, however, as faith is very important to me and I do have confidence in my life after death.

Why try your absolute best to not think about it, instead of taking some steps to reduce your animal consumption and actually feel better about it? I get that something like mortality is an intrusive thought that you can do nothing about, but it's pretty easy to take steps to reduce meat consumption and actually feel better about it.

Ignoring suffering is much easier than relieving it.

Caring about others isn't fun.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com